What Can You Expect? She Only Tried 71 Times!
From
KUTV:
Every single time Laura Elise-Chamberlain calls the Social Security
Administration, it goes the same way: the phone rings for five to 10
minutes, and then the line is disconnected.
Elise-Chamberlain
is calling because she got a letter saying the SSA has about $4,000 of
money that is rightfully hers. To claim it, call, the letter says.
With that not working, Elise-Chamberlain tried a work-around.
“I've
gone to the social security office in person just to see, waited for
two hours, and was told that they can't help me," she said.
Elise-Chamberlain has been persistent, calling 71 times, she showed Get Gephardt [apparently a reporter at the TV station] in her phone’s call log.
Can't think of one instance where someone has to call to get any money other than filing on either her or someone else's record to receive a higher benefit. In that case, she'd just need to come in to file (unless it is retirement and she can do that online).
ReplyDeleteSomething doesn't sound entirely right here. Been doing this quite some time, never have had that much problem with anything, and have handled some really screwed up stuff.
ReplyDelete@9:56
ReplyDeleteI can think of one. I've seen notices where a recipient has left the country for an extended period of time and benefits were turned off. Sometimes it is erroneous, sometimes not. Either way, you have to contact SSA to get benefits turned back on. Pretty rare, but it does happen. I recall sometimes the local field offices couldn't help with those situations, depending on the circumstances.
@9:26
Agreed. In my experience, while the wait time is long to get to the call center, there phone lines are pretty stable. Only time I've been disconnected, which occurred within 1 minute or so, was back when the government was shutting down and SSA' phone lines were flooded with people worried there benefit checks were not being mailed out. SSA was automatically disconnecting people, with a voice message explaining checks were going out and to call back later with any other questions...which was frustrating, but nothing like what the article is talking about.